On today's episode of the TeacherCast Podcast, we welcome Kat Kennewell and Phil Grigonis on the program to showcase the amazing Edison Robot from Microbric.

About Edison Robots

In 2014, with only a tiny team based in South Australia, Microbric launched the Edison robot with a bang. The wildly successful Kickstarter campaign hit 524% funding and the popularity of Edison has only grown from there. The highly versatile and easy-to-use robot is now distributed globally and can be found in schools in more than 50 countries around the world.

Microbric’s vision for the Edison robot is to create an affordable, comprehensive STEM teaching resource for coding and robotics education for students in years 3 – 9. To support this vision, users of Edison have access to free educational resources and programming apps.

The Edison robot can be programmed multiple ways: using pre-set barcodes, EdWare, EdPy and now, EdBlocks.

EdBlocks, the newest programming language for Edison robots, is a fully icon-based language that is super easy to use. A drag-and-drop block-based system, EdBlocks is intuitive and fun, even for younger users. Perfect for introducing anyone to programming, EdBlocks is ideal for students aged 8 to 12 years old.

Students can then take their programming further with EdWare, a hybrid graphical language, and EdPy, a highly versatile text-based programming language based on Python.

Best of all? Access to all programming languages and associated teaching resources is absolutely free.

Links of Interest

About our Guests

Kat Kennewell

Product and Marketing Manager for Microbric, a South Australia-based educational robotics company, Kat has experience working in education, eLearning, and technology. An avid writer, Kat believes the right words can connect people with the ideas they need to make a better world for today and tomorrow.

Phil Grigonis

Phil Grigonis is a Technology Education teacher at Upper Perkiomen Middle School in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Management Information Systems and a Masters in Technology Education. Phil has been teaching for the past three years, and has worked for IBM and Accenture Consulting in previous careers. In addition to teaching, he is the advisor at his school for the Technology Student Association (TSA) and a member of the Technology Education and Engineering Association of Pennsylvania (TEEAP).

EdBlocks is a fully graphical robot programming language that is super easy to use. A drag-and-drop block-based system, EdBlocks is intuitive and fun, even for younger users – perfect for students in grades 3 to 6

EdWare combines the ease of drag-and-drop graphical icons with increased functionality from text-based entry, a great next-step in coding education.

EdPy is a highly versatile text-based programming language based on Python. EdPy makes text-based programming fun by letting students see their code come to life in their Edison robot. With EdPy, students are learning the core of a real programming language and are able to take their exploration of robotics and coding to a more advanced level.

About the author, Jeffrey

Jeff Bradbury, creator of TeacherCast, and father of the famous @EduTriplets is the Coordinator of Instructional Technology at Westwood Regional School District. Thanks for checking out TeacherCast today. Please take a moment to find me on all of my Social Media channels!